AZ Here We Come

Tomorrow we leave for Arizona. This trip means a lot to our family for many reasons. We get to see Jeremy's brother Bryce who will be returning home from his mission on Tuesday, we get to see lots of family that we have not seen in too long (including my grandpa who is very ill), we get to get away as a family, and we get to have a nice dose of sunshine.

We have had our tickets booked for several weeks and have been anxiously waiting the trip ever since. We find ourselves talking about it frequently and the excitement has rubbed off on Merrick. A few days ago I guess he was tired of all this talk of Arizona with no action and decided to take matters into his own hands.

Slowly but surely he started making a pile of all the things he wanted to take to Arizona. He made sure to include the really important things like the remote control for his ceiling fan. Soon he had a huge mound of things for Arizona and it took me a while to convince him that we were not quite ready to go and could put his things away until it was time to go.

The ironic part is that now it is almost time to go and we are not yet packed.

Winter Creativity

I know that I am VERY late with my weekly blog, but the computer has been busy this week with tax preparations, but I guess better late than never. So this week the weather has been crazy, with plenty of rain and snow. As a result the boys(Merrick, Quincy, and Colvin)have been trapped inside and this has resulted in some "creativity".

My favorite example of this happened this week when the boys decided to put on life jacket and ride their ball pit down the stairs like a river raft. My initial reaction was to stop it, but then I realized that the "raft" barely fit down the stairs and therefore moved very slowly and it turns out three little boys can spend a LOT of time fake river rafting. It turned out to be a win-win.

"Vacation" Week

Last week was my last week of watching Ben and Becca's boys full-time and next week Becca and I start swapping watching each other's kids two days a week. This week though, Ben and Becca were out of town. While I still had to work my other job, I had more time than I have had in a long time to spend with my boys and wanted to make the most of it. Jeremy was also committed to our family week of fun and while he still had to study and go to class, we all made extra effort to do fun things together as a family.

Here are the highlights of our week:

We went for walks.

We had lunch at the Lake Oswego Creamery.

We went had a picnic in the park and fed the ducks/seagulls/geese. They were a little aggressive so we took refuge on some nearby rocks. My favorite part of this was when Merrick heard a familiar noise and said "That's a seagull mom. I usually punch them in the face"

We went shopping.

We went to multiple libraries (and even took time to explore the sculptures out front)

We capped off the week with fort night on Saturday night (I don't know who was more excited about it, Jeremy or Merrick) with pizza and "Handy Manny" all from the comfort of our fort.

It was a great week and a vacation without really being on vacation.

My New Appendage

As I have mentioned before, over the last several months I have been working for a baby sleep coach. The work that I do for her is almost entirely online. Because of this I find myself on the computer much more frequently than before. Starting next week, I will be doubling my hours (up to 20 hours) and this means that once again the computer will take an even more prominent role in my life.

Also this week, I finally cracked down and forced myself to begin working on our 2011 blog book. I have barely scratched the surface on getting that accomplished and see many hours ahead in taking that project to completion.

Between all these things, I feel like the computer has become my new appendage. Jeremy took this picture of me working this weekend. When he took it, he captioned it, "a working mom". I just feel blessed that I can do my work with my baby on my lap. While having the computer attached to my side may seem like an annoyance from time to time, it is definitely a blessing in my life.